The U.S.-Canada-Mexico Free Trade Agreement threatens to be a disaster for sustainable agriculture, harming the well-being of farmers, consumers and the environment in all three countries. On the one hand, the agreement encourages both increased corporate concentration in the food processing sector and the further expansion of large- scale “factory farms” in all three countries. On the other hand, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) would restrict local, state and national governments’ ability to regulate the flow of goods across their borders, making it difficult for sustainable farmers to compete in the continental market and impossible for consumer safety to be adequately protected.

Threat to farm families

NAFTA would give multinational grain companies based in the United States unlimited access for their exports of corn and other grains to Mexico. At present, almost three million Mexican peasants sell corn at price levels set high enough by their government to secure farmers sufficient cash income to survive. This system requires the Mexican government to strictly regulate imports so that this price level is not undermined by subsidized corn imports.

Economists in both Mexico and the United States predict that if the grain companies succeed in using NAFTA to open the Mexican corn market, the price paid to Mexican peasants for corn will fall dramatically, forcing one million or more families off their land. Most of these families are expected to migrate to the United States in search of either farmworker jobs in the countryside or service sector work in the major cities. Others will head to MexicoÆs urban areas, such as Mexico City and Guadalajara, increasing social, economic and environmental pressure on these already vastly overpopulated areas.

Abolition of import restrictions will have additional effects channeled through the U.S. market, since the U.S. government has long used import regulations to sustain a domestic agricultural sector. For example, the Meat Import Act of 1979 established strict controls on the level of beef imports allowed into the United States. But fast-food hamburger retailers have pushed to ensure that NAFTA will abolish or weaken these controls, allowing them to import more hamburger meat.

Beef can be produced most cheaply in North America on cleared rainforest land in southern Mexico; a sharp increase in U.S. beef imports from this region would accelerate rainforest destruction. Another worry is that Mexico would ship ship domestically produced beef to the United States and substitute beef grown on destroyed rainforest regions in Central and South America for Mexican consumption – a practice that has already begun.

Unlimited beef imports would also lower the income of family-sized cattle producers in the United States, since these producers would have to sell at prices low enough to compete with rainforest beef. If NAFTA is accepted as currently proposed, an increasing share of the U.S. beef supply would be imported and small U.S. cattle farmers would be forced out of business. With more beef coming from overseas, there would also be a smaller market for U.S.-grown hay, corn and other feedstuffs, devastating those farmers who produce these grains for U.S. cattle.

Unregulated beef exports into the United States would also result in serious environmental problems in the United States. Currently, many U.S. beef cattle graze on the hillsides and meadows of the upper Midwest. The northern region of the state of Minnesota, with the exception of the Red River Valley, for example, generally has poor soil conditions. The region is hilly with thin topsoil, and the land is quite fragile. The only agriculture production suited for this land – and indeed needed to maintain this land – is livestock grazing. If beef imports from the Mexican rainforest are permitted, they will drive down U.S. beef prices and put MinnesotaÆs diversified, small, family beef operations out of business. These farmers would most likely plant their fragile land with row crops, soybeans or corn, in hopes of earning enough income to at least pay taxes and expenses. It would only take one or two growing seasons before these crops would cause the topsoil to wash away at a non-sustainable rate, ultimately destroying the productivity of the land.